


Nothing but time

by FlamingoQueen



Series: Fossilized [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: (also pronounced "coping mechanisms"), (it's pronounced "coping mechanisms"), Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Crack Treated Seriously, Dinosaur-on-Dinosaur Violence, Dinosaurs, Dissociation, Established Relationship, Grumpy Bucky Barnes, M/M, POV Multiple, Post-Recovery Bucky Barnes, Rain, Sea Monsters, Steve Rogers Has Issues, Time Travel, Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:54:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23794951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlamingoQueen/pseuds/FlamingoQueen
Summary: “You know the Blue Planet episodes where the flying fish escape their predators by swimming super fast toward the surface and then gliding in the air as long as they can, and maybe they’re lucky and plop down far enough away that whatever was after them can’t find them?”Steve nods. “You think gigantic teenaged murder dolphin was doing that?”“Yeah,” Bucky says. “But it didn’t get far enough away.”(Or: Steve and Bucky realize that there’s always a bigger fish.)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: Fossilized [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1489358
Comments: 34
Kudos: 46





	Nothing but time

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the seventh installment of the series based on my Happy Steve Bingo card! This is for N1: Caught in a Downpour/Storm. It will help if you are familiar with the earlier parts, but it shouldn't be absolutely necessary to read them all.
> 
> This one has been written since February, and I keep putting off publishing it because it skips ahead a bit, time-wise. But I want to post, so I'm going to go ahead and summarize: In the last story, they were gearing up to make a raft. That is Raft 1.0, which is a dud and falls apart before they even get it to the water. At the time of this story, maybe three weeks or so after that, Bucky is working on an alternate raft design, but they are not yet building it. Also, they've moved to be closer to the pieces of the dud, and have found a salt source.
> 
> Content warnings below.

### Bucky

His first thought is that he wants to eat it. 

A fish that big has to be tasty in proportion to its size. Nothing else would be fair. And life owes him a bit of “fair” after all the shit it’s dumped on him for decades on end. 

Not that life’s gonna pay up, the rat bastard. And a single, shining, shit-free day would be a mere drop in the bucket when it comes to balancing out the catastrophe that is his life, sure. But has he ever been in a position to be picky? No. Not ever. 

That he can remember. 

Which doesn't say much.

Or maybe says a lot.

But the point is, he will take whatever “fair” life throws at him, and he’ll take it like a greedy fucking bastard and never let go. If “fair” includes nearly killing the only decent thing to happen to him to date in a fiery helicarrier, he’ll take it—not the least because that brand of “fair” also includes an opportunity to make it up to Steve later.

And to make up for everything else he’s done as best he can, even if he really _can’t_ , because there’s no making up for the amount of blood he’s spilled. But it’s an opportunity, anyway. A chance to try. And if that’s how life’s trying to be “fair,” then he’ll grab that, too, before it gets away. Because it’s not like he deserves the second chance.

And if that second chance includes dinosaur paradiso here… _Now_. He shakes his head with a grumble. Fucking Steve with his temporal brain-teaser. Or maybe it’s his brain-teaser. Fuck whichever one of them came up with that.

But fair’s fair. He didn’t want to go on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s mandatory “you’re insane and we worry” vacation, and so he has to go on this other one instead. Sure. Why the fuck not. Steve dragged him on the S.H.I.E.L.D. vacation, and now Steve’s stuck here— _now_ , fucking _damn_ it! Now Steve’s stuck _now_ with him on this other vacation. 

Fair. See?

His definition of “fair” is right up there with the ten-thousand-spoons lady’s ridiculous definition of “irony.” He knows that. He’s not stupid, and he’s not dictionary-challenged. Not a single, goddamn thing about any of this is actually fair, if you’re going to use good old Merriam-Webster. But rain on a wedding day isn’t ironic, and no one actually went out and sued Morissette over that.

Though maybe they should have.

His second thought, which hits him with the splash sound from whatever the fuck that is hitting the water again on its way back down, is incomprehensible mental babbling and wordless shrieking static between his ears while his brain tries to make any sense at all of what he’s just seen and how fucking, _fucking_ big it is. Was. _Is_. Because it’s still out there. Under there. In the water.

Holy fucking fuckballs. That should not be possible. Whales aren’t whales yet, right? And they don’t have narrow jaws and too many teeth like that even they _are_ already whales. What the actual—

It occurs to him in that distant, vague, underwater way that is always unpleasant and usually serves as a signal to check the time against something that doesn’t skip town like his brain does—something like a watch or a phone, except he has neither—that his jaw hurts. 

Why does his jaw— Oh. 

Bucky closes his mouth. 

Right.

He blinks, then blinks again several times and rubs his eyes with the heel of his right palm because yeah, he totally lost some time there, and if dry eyes were an accurate timepiece, he’d guess it’s been maybe half an hour. The tides are way more predictable than whether his eyes dry out, though, and the water lapping at his ankles tells him it’s been closer to a full hour.

Fuck that. 

He came down here to scrape some salt off the rocks, not stare at the water with its red-tinged ripples and the squabbling pterodactyls picking apart whatever got sheared off when… that thing… whatever it was… torpedoed itself up out of that water and snapped a fucking terror goose in half, and the baby nessie with it.

One moment, terror goose overhead, baby nessie in the waves. The next moment, terror goose making for the cloudy sky with baby nessie in its jaws, and fuck that terror goose, nessies are cute, but that’s life for you. Third moment, though… Third moment, chomp. No more baby nessie. No more terror goose. No more hour or so of time.

So. Right. Salt.

It’s only a short swim across to the big off-shore rock with its cliff face where the wind leaves all that glistening white salt just waiting for a sharpened clam shell and a determined super soldier.

A very short swim.

Only a mile or so out.

And his basket is very watertight after considerable effort, and will just float along behind him, both there and back, tethered to his ankle exactly as intended. An extremely concave hand-woven mini-surfboard, but for gathering salt and shit, and not stirring up adrenaline on the waves.

Doable. More than doable. Steve’s done this before. Bucky’s done this before. Bucky and Steve have done this _together_ before, one of them holding the basket and the other scraping the salt off. They’d taken turns. It had been fun.

Or as fun as climbing a pterodactyl-guarded cliff above churning waves is ever going to be. Licking the rock— _that_ had been fun. Their own personal Blarney Stone, a super soldier salt lick.

Salt is important for balancing electrolytes, and preserving food, and having things taste even a little tiny bit better than they otherwise would.

And the ferns won’t kimchi themselves into being edible. There are a lot of ferns. If fermenting them turns them from stomach-shredding horror fronds into something they can actually digest, that will be a good thing. And maybe even a tasty thing. And definitely a thing worth getting into that water for.

Bucky eyes the pterodactyls swooping overhead. None of them are getting close to the water now. There’d been a momentary frenzy of scraps-picking along the surface, but they’re all staying pretty high up in the air now.

Probably a sign. 

Probably a sign he should _pay attention to_.

It isn’t like the pterodactyl that bit it—or rather, got bitten—was a little one. Terror geese are big enough to hunt nessies, even if it’s just the little ones. Little nessies are still objectively big creatures. Still way more than a mouthful, even for a normal murder dolphin. Only way a terror goose could eat that little nessie is getting it to shore.

He narrows his eyes, chases out the thoughts that are not helpful. None of that matters. He’s not conducting a prehistoric CSI routine. Motive and means and shit mean nothing. Besides, there’s no mystery here. Just life being a dick to everyone around.

What’s _important_ here is that he cannot ferment ferns without salt. There is salt right there, on the rock, just a mile or so out. He’s a strong swimmer. And yes, his fucking metal monstrosity needs to be coddled because no one has invented screwdrivers and blow torches yet, but he can still fucking swim.

Those pterodactyls have brains like walnuts, anyway. What do _they_ know.

Something brushes up against his foot in the surf and he absently stabs it with the makeshift fishing spear he’d brought along in lieu of a knife. Have to preserve those, after all, and fire-hardened wood is pretty good in a pinch. Not nearly as kick-ass as a fucking stegosaur tail-stabby will be, once he gets his hands on one. Someday. 

“I’m coming for you, spiky boi,” he mutters to his future prey as he inspects his accidental catch of the day. Not bad. It’s one of the bony sea pancakes, this one in an attractive baby pink. “Gonna get you, too. Just like this little guy.”

Since Steve hates these and isn’t here, and since he’s at least waiting to swim out there until the obnoxious walnut-brained pterodactyls go back to their normal behavior, Bucky stomps out of the water and further up the beach where he can wait out the tide and crunch his way through this sea pancake, carapace and all, because calcium is a good thing.

Salty. Like the cloud-covered sea, and like that glint of white in the distance that’s fucking mocking him with interrupted dreams of kimchi.

He’s just about ready to tackle the waves again—is, in fact, hip deep in the water—when it happens again, but _worse_. Because of course it can get worse. If life’s taught him anything, it’s that everything can always get worse. There is no “worst” and therefore no limit to “worse.”

And in this case, “worse” just means he gets a better look at it.

The nessies are essentially all neck with four flippers. The adults are huge, sure, and they’re long. But they’re basically like miniature aquatic long-necks. Not nearly as bulky as the actual long-necks out on the plain. They’d be a good several meals if they washed up fresh on the beach, or if he and Steve could catch one, but the necks make them look a lot bigger than they really are.

And the terror geese are pretty much all wing with a long neck. They’re big and they’re mean. They’re tenacious and territorial. They’re a very bad day if they get it in their teeny tiny minds that you’re tasty. But there’s not much meat on them, and their actual bodies are kinda scrawny—hell, he’d almost called them Stevasaurs for the combo of scrawny tenacity.

So something big and nasty launching itself skyward to snap a baby nessie in half, or a terror goose, or a terror goose with a baby nessie in its mouth—that’s unfortunate. That’s surprising. That’s life, though. There’s ultimately nothing at the very top of any food chain that isn’t in turn vulnerable to something else.

But this— This thing that leaps out of the water for round two, the slo-mo version, is like a blimp, if a blimp were shaped more like one of those normal, sleek, striped murder dolphins and was the size a goddamn oil tanker. Bigger than, actually. Its fucking mouth bits are longer than he is tall, and that is utterly and completely not okay. 

Nor is it _fair_.

What’s equally unfair is that it actually clears the water fully this time, revealing itself to be, yes, not just something shaped like a murder dolphin, but something that actually _is_ a murder dolphin. Just a fucking, fucking huge one with dark gray mottles blotching all over lighter gray and not an orca-style white patch in sight.

The murder dolphins they’ve encountered so far are maybe as long as Steve is tall. Not a big deal. Actually kind of cute in a way, except that their mouths are sort of stabby-shaped. That might make them cuter, if he’s gonna be honest with himself. Cuter to him, anyway. Steve’s got more conventional notions of cuteness.

This one, though. This one is… Bigger. About three times bigger. With an eye too big for its head, and—

He’s seen fucking whales doing their thing, back in the future. Those sleek tubs of blubber rarely get all the way above the waves, and not by much when they do, before they’re flopping back in, albeit gracefully. Maneuvering that bulk so smoothly and all, well, it means whales are impressive. 

This thing isn’t graceful when it leaps, but it kind of doesn’t have to be graceful to check the “impressive” box.

It could stand to be quicker, though, because the thing that comes up out of the water _after_ it in hot pursuit is… clearly hungry, to put it nicely. 

And doesn’t actually get all the way up out of the water, but doesn’t really need to, because it’s like a crocodile head on top of a nessie body, without the snake neck. Like a jock nessie, with its neck all thick and short and ropey.

And it takes an effortless, wedge-shaped chunk right out of the Jurassic Hindenburg with its massive flashing teeth in its massive gaping maw, and—oh the fucking _humanity_ —look at all the insides go exploding outside from the force of the blow and the resulting crash of… of just… of all of that _meat_ hitting the water again.

He doesn’t lose any time this go around. Nope. Not a second of it, more’s the pity. He gets to experience every single shred of time in which his whole body, even the fucking metal part, refuses to cooperate or do anything intelligent at all.

Like get out of the fucking water and so far up the beach that none of this shit can get _him_ next. Or maintain a reasonably steady heartbeat. Although what is reasonable in the face of _that_ , anyway?

This newest oceanic disaster doesn’t have the decency to disappear afterward, either, but splashes back to the surface a few times in short order, grabbing the death blimp and thrashing around in great sprays of bloody red froth and foam until massive wads of fishy flesh and viscera come loose to be gulped down. 

He’s seen some shit in his life, and no denying it. But he could stand to see this particular bit of shit from a lot further away.

At some point an uncomfortably long time into the ordeal, the scene finally manages to sink low enough into the water that he can’t see fins and flippers and tails and whatever elses flashing above the waves, but just the choppy red waves themselves, roiling from the solo feeding frenzy—oh, fucking god, he hopes it’s a _solo_ feeding frenzy and not a goddamn party of five—just under the surface.

After several more minutes than he will ever admit to, the eerily silent beach finally gets some noise back in the place. It’s not the squabble of greedy pterodactyl bastards, though. More of a breathy babbling in about a dozen languages, none of the words even one-third formed, and that? 

That’s all him. 

Fuck his life. This isn’t fair. Things that are that big should not exist. Not now, not here, not here and now, not ever.

Since his legs have already decided against the sensible thing—which would be getting the fuck away from the water—Bucky goes ahead and makes use of the damn monster-haunted wet stuff and reaches down to splash his face. It helps, but it also doesn’t do jack shit. 

Because here he is hip-deep in the now-murky, now-reddish water at a fucking prehistoric shore holding a goddamn burned twig for all intents and purposes, contemplating getting all the way in the fucking bloodied water with th— with— th— with tha… that… sort of… thing. 

For some fucking sea salt.

It’s a right regular showdown on the dinosaur beachfront. Bucky Barnes vs the inescapable desire for some fucking Jurassic kimchi. Because probiotics are good for you. Why do they have to be good for you?

He does want some of that in their diet. It’s the nutritionally sound course of action. He’s gotta take care of that for them, because Steve can’t. Doesn’t want to or doesn’t know how to—doesn’t matter which. Bucky _can_ provide, ergo Bucky _will_ provide.

At the same time, there’s reckless stupidity in pursuit of a good cause, and then there’s hopping in the fucking water with something so big its fucking eyeball—fuck, the fucking pupil _inside_ its fucking eyeball!—is bigger than his own goddamn fucking face.

“…some other day, Barnes,” he finally manages to tell himself, and with words that are actually fully completed words and not random clusters of syllables. And his feet are willing to move at long last. And in a beachward direction, no less. All for the best, that. 

Once firmly on the shore, Bucky sucks in a few breaths, one by one, and lets them each out as slowly and smoothly as he can, which is neither slow nor smooth for quite a while. But he’s good at this, good at clawing some semblance of sanity out of the soup in his skull.

The point is, fuck salt. Yes. Fuck it. He’ll go back for salt when he’s… when some of his stupid grows back with a second head, or whatever. In the meantime, they’ll… They’ll just have to… 

He looks around the beach, more than half afraid he’s about to see a slice of that whole bullshit “third time’s a charm” asshattery on the part of the universe that hates him.

He doesn’t.

So in the meantime, they’ll just have to eat some fucking reeds from the marshy patch where the stream empties out into the… the fucking monster lagoon.

It’s not salt, but it’s also not empty-handed. And who knows. If he went out for salt when the water is such a popular gathering place, he might only manage to come back _one_ -handed, which is loads worse than empty-handed. 

After all. Life’s favorite pastime is fucking him over. The fucking metal monstrosity is shiny. Shiny like the side of a fish, maybe. Shiny like _bait_. And that’s worked great for attracting little fish out of a stream. It would probably also work great for attracting big-ass death blimp murder dolphins and the jock-necked nessies that rip them to pieces.

A vibration rolls across the beach under his feet, accompanied by a thick, rumbling boom and followed almost immediately with the steady hiss of rain on water, the dull thumping of rain on sand, and the chill pitter-patter of rain on his own fucking head. Because of course the cloud cover is actually a fucking rainstorm waiting to happen. 

Because _that’s_ fair.

Bucky nods to himself, accepts the inevitability of everything, tips his face upward, and flips the sky a massive double bird because he’s still got two hands and fuck the entire universe, that’s why.

### Steve

The high-pitched squabbling overhead is Steve’s first hint, and the rustling and creaking of the pines themselves is his second. But he knows for _sure_ that it’s a storm that’s blown in when the thunder rolls through him, shaking the ground with its passage in a way modern-day thunder just never quite managed. 

Or will manage.

They’re used to these storms by now, even if they can’t ever see the weather coming as quickly as their prehistoric neighbors. 

Sometimes they’ll be out by the shore, enjoying a bit of unfiltered sun—and “no, Steve,” Bucky will say, “we’re not going to get prehistoric skin cancer,” though Bucky cannot possibly know that for sure—and the storm will roll in over the sea fully formed, dark with rain, and sparking with lightning, right out of what had been a clear blue sky. 

The first signs are always the pterodactyls, banking and flapping, making for the trees all along this particular patch of shore, or else heading straight toward the rocky cliffs off-shore to the north. They do that for a lot of reasons, though, and so their judgement isn’t exactly trustworthy. A whole afternoon of foraging can be wasted hiding from a storm that isn’t coming.

After the fuzzy flappers comes the wind, and that’s the reliable sign that they should take cover, go hunker down under the forest canopy, preferably on top of some pine boughs, because sitting in rainwater and fern mud is less fun after the novelty of it wears off. If they’re quick, they can get pretty deep into the forest before the sneaky ninja rain even gets started.

Or sometimes they’ll be up on the cliff itself—trying to get eggs, maybe, though that’s always dicey, or trying to chisel off some of the salt deposits so their meat lasts longer—and the first thing they know of the storm is all the pterodactyls arriving back en mass and dislodging them into the sea, which is not an ideal place to wait out a storm, though they’re both strong swimmers, at least.

And since they’re strong climbers, too, they usually manage to abandon their goods to the sea and haul themselves up above the tide line for however long the storm is planning to rage, which puts them down a few baskets and some eggs or salt, but also puts them above the reach of the very hungry sea beasts they share this world with.

But sometimes it’s like this, one of them out digging something up or chopping something down or chiseling something off, and the other back at their camp, weaving yet another basket, or stripping down wood fibers into something they can make rope out of, or grinding up seeds or nuts.

Steve frowns at the second roll of thunder shuddering overhead through the crowns of the pine trees, and hopes Bucky’s going to show up miserable and grumpy very soon, because that means that he is for sure not clinging to a cliff face with his metal arm dug into the rock as he does his best not to get tossed into the sea.

Being a strong swimmer greatly reduces his chances of drowning, but there are murder dolphins and nessies in the water that very likely do not care how good a swimmer Bucky is, because he is made—mostly—out of meat. Also, the sharks. And the fish look pretty mean. And Steve hasn’t seen one—yet—but if they’re out there, he’s sure the crocodiles are only “small” by comparison to some of those other things in the water. 

Steve brings their equipment back under the massive hollowed out tree trunk they’ve made their storm shelter out of. He gets it all tucked away and covered in fronds by the time the trees are drenched enough to let fat droplets of water through their needles and onto the forest floor. And he brings out both of the wide, conical basket hats Bucky insisted on for a bit of cooling shade or a bit of protection from the rain.

It’s almost enough of a distraction from wondering what Bucky’s doing in the storm, but not enough to keep him occupied for long. Maybe it was a bad egg day, and Bucky decided to gather horsetails and reeds in the shallows by the shore. Or maybe he found a more accessible nest to raid. Or maybe he was collecting smooth rocks or fallen timber for turning into kitchen gear.

There hasn’t been a whistled message, so at the very least, Bucky hasn’t had an encounter with what they have decided is probably an allosaurus and not a t-rex. The forest does somewhat distort the whistle language they’ve worked out, but between their enhanced hearing and the fact that they can both whistle pretty damn loudly if they put some effort into it, Steve’s sure he’d have heard all about such a run-in.

Doesn’t stop him from worrying, though. And he knows Bucky would be just as worried if they’d opted to split the day’s tasks up the other way around. When there is literally only one other person in the entire world to share things with and interact with and depend on and love, that other person becomes very, very important.

Important enough that it’d be unhealthy in the future, surrounded by other people who could take on some of the burden of providing social connection.

Of course, he and Bucky probably didn’t have a healthy relationship back in the future. Sam had on more than one occasion coughed the word “codependent” at them, but hey, that’s turned out for the best given their current situation.

Steve is about fifteen minutes from grabbing one of their knives and stalking out into the forest to hunt down his partner—well, fifteen minutes is generous, given he’s already got his hand in the knife basket—when Bucky shows up looking about as bedraggled as he’s capable of looking, short of bleeding somewhere.

“It’s raining,” Bucky announces flatly as he lets his basket of reeds drop to the ground with a sodden thump, and the waterproofing on that basket is impressive, because there’s actually enough water in there to slosh out when it hits the ground.

Steve takes the briefest of moments to look Bucky up and down for signs of injury before he’s clinging to Bucky with a shaky sigh. “Oh, god, Buck. Thank you for not being on the cliff.”

* * *

One of the many benefits they’re finding to walking with the dinosaurs is that the weather comes in essentially two flavors. It is hot and humid, or it is hot and raining. 

On the surface, that isn’t much of a benefit. But they’ve both had enough ice to last them, and while Steve might sometimes wish he could put a few ice cubes in their water bottle, or plop a bag of ice on a sore spot, or even just cool off after a strenuous afternoon, he’ll take this over an ice age, even if Bucky swears woolly mammoth is going to taste good someday.

And he’ll especially take this over the possibility of Bucky shivering and miserable at camp after a thorough soak in a torrential downpour. Though being soaked is still psychologically chill-inducing. Nothing to do about that but huddle together.

But the heat at least means that instead of outright needing a fire, he and Bucky can just sit on the raised platform of logs they’ve constructed a few feet off the ground, hunkering under their wide-brimmed hats, and waiting out the storm like all the rest of the animals in the forest.

“I was going to go for some salt, you know,” Bucky says, when he’s feeling cheerful enough—or least less grumpy enough—to talk about it. “Thought it might be nice to have a little more of it, maybe try using it to ferment some stuff. Prehistoric kimchi. You know.”

Steve shivers. “I’m glad you didn’t. What changed your mind?” 

Very little changes Bucky’s mind once he’s got an idea working its way through his brain. If he’s planning to pickle something, or maybe bury it in salt for a few months, or whatever it is that’s got his attention, then Steve can’t see much getting in the way of him scraping off several pounds of that salt to experiment with, even if they have no way to keep it fresh once it’s off the cliffs.

“You know the honking pterodactyls with the big red blocks on their heads?” Bucky gestures vaguely. “Not the ones with the bony little feet and the blue stripes down their backs. I mean the big fuckers. The terror geese.”

Yeah, Steve knows them. They’re _terrifying_ , thus the designation of terror goose instead of Stevasaur. Worse on land, actually, than they are in the air. Not as big as the demon school buses, but smaller isn’t always better, and they’re still easily the size of a grown man, even if not as bulky a grown man as Bucky or himself.

Add in their territoriality, aggression, and propensity to never turn away from a chase, and if there was one of those flying around, it _might_ be enough to convince Bucky that horsetails and reeds were the order of the day and not salt. Maybe. Bucky doesn’t get intimidated by much when he has a mission.

“I know them,” Steve says slowly, sort of dreading whatever confession of recklessness is coming next. Usually they manage to save their recklessness for when the other is around to serve as spotter. It’s sounding like that isn’t the way this story is going to go.

Bucky looks at him from under the hat, eyes wide in something that is partway between remembered fear and amazement. “Steve,” he breathes. “Steve, I saw something today.” He swallows. “I saw a… A _thing_. Two things.”

He gestures again, just as vaguely but with greater intensity, clearly still affected by whatever it is he saw, maybe even unsettled. “Big, _big_ things,” he continues. “First off, murder dolphins come in XXL. Maybe even 3X, 4X. We’ve only seen the little ones, the little ankle-biting cuties.”

“Bucky, they’re as a long as we are. They are not ankle-biting cuties.”

“Compared to what I saw, they’re teeny-tiny.” Bucky holds up thumb and forefinger maybe an inch apart. “Small fry doesn’t begin to cover it. Think bigger, like three times bigger. But—!”

Steve knows the raised eyebrows and raised finger of “wait for it” and so he waits for Bucky to continue, not sure he likes where this is going, particularly since the direction it seems to be headed is the same direction as “no more salt, ever.”

Bucky is apparently satisfied that Steve’s paying him the right amount of attention, because he puts his hand back down and lets his eyebrows drop again. “You know the murder dolphins have that color change, where the babies are kind of lightish on the bottom and darkish on the top, and the adults are gray with blotchy white stripes all up and down, and the stripes show up as they get older?”

Steve nods.

“And you know how we’ve seen the same sort of thing in the long-necks. Babies in the ferns are kind of blotchy, adults out on the plains are striped. The pattern changes. And the Christmas grackles do that, too. And the grumpy schnoz-heads. And—”

“The point, Bucky,” Steve gently interrupts.

Bucky stops and stares at him for a bit, and then blinks and nods. “Thanks. That was getting away from me.”

“No problem.” Yeah, he’s still reeling from his morning discovery. It puts Steve on edge just knowing that. Bucky usually rallies a lot quicker than this. “What were you trying to say?”

“Steve, I don’t think what I saw was actually an adult. I think they get bigger than that.”

Steve turns that over in his mind. “Bigger than three times as long as we are tall.”

Bucky nods. “Its face was taller than me. The stabby mouth part of its face. Its eye was bigger than my head. But I’m pretty sure it was a teenager. Maybe off hunting on its own for the first time away from its mama.”

And isn’t that a terrifying thought? Though, speaking of terror… “Bucky, what does the terror goose have to do with the gigantic teenaged murder dolphin?” Please let the latter not have eaten the former. Please, please, let the latter not have eaten the former.

Bucky takes a moment to gather his thoughts. “So the terror goose was flying around, and it swooped low to snatch a baby nessie. But something awful swooped _up_ , and— Chomp.” Bucky slaps his hands together. “No more terror goose. Just a few stray pieces. One bite, Steve. In every way that matters, that thing fucking _swallowed the terror goose whole_.”

Why.

It isn’t that Steve finds that hard to believe. There is very little he finds hard to believe anymore. But he _wants_ to not believe it. Because he likes salt. Salt makes food not spoil as fast, and it makes food taste better, and it helps them keep enough electrolytes or whatever when they do run into problems with spoiled food or toxic food.

“Maybe it was just another one of the sharks? Just a bigger one than usual.”

Bucky shakes his head. “No. The shape was wrong for that. It was pointier, like—” He waves his hands. “Not ‘like,’ Steve. It _was_ a murder dolphin. When it came up the second time, it—”

“The second time?!” Steve squawks. “Why were you even still _around_ for the _second_ time?”

“I…” Bucky’s mouth makes a few soundless trial runs, and Steve feels bad when he catches the slightly distant look in his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Buck. I didn’t mean it like that.” Steve gives himself a colossal mental kick. Yes, he’s been worried, and yes he had a scare this morning thinking Bucky was hanging off a cliff in a storm, or worse, but… Bucky is clearly a lot more rattled than he is, and doesn’t need the accusation. “Neither of us has any room to talk when it comes to being reckless, anyway. I was just wor—”

“Was about an hour later,” Bucky mumbles. “I think.”

He thinks. Steve sighs, feeling even worse. Bucky’s time sense is impeccable. Doesn’t skip a beat, doesn’t get confused by illness, injury, time zones or anything. Unless he blanks. Then he has to scramble to figure out what he should reset that internal clock to.

Steve reaches out to put a hand over Bucky’s arm, gives him a gentle squeeze. “It’s okay, Buck. It happens. I don’t think I’d have handled seeing that very well, either. Not all alone like that.”

Bucky frowns, but it doesn’t seem to be directed at himself, so Steve lets him have his thoughts without interruption. He’d jump in and scatter any thoughts that were along the lines of self-recrimination, but he’s had to do that less and less the longer they’re here. Now.

“You know the Blue Planet episodes where the flying fish escape their predators by swimming super fast toward the surface and then gliding in the air as long as they can, and maybe they’re lucky and plop down far enough away that whatever was after them can’t find them?”

Steve nods. “You think gigantic teenaged murder dolphin was doing that?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “But it didn’t get far enough away. There was something bigger coming too quick.”

And here Steve had been thinking all the big dinosaurs were long-necks out on the plains and the oceans were mostly just fish, sharks, nessies and murder dolphins.

Bucky hops down into the mud and uses one of the many sticks lying around to draw what looks sort of like the front half of a nessie but with a short, stocky neck. “It was like this. But if he had teeth longer than your arm and thicker around. This thing could eat the biggest shark we’ve ever seen and be looking for seconds. And then maybe still order dessert.”

Steve gives that a moment to sink in. “Well, at least we aren’t worth the attention.” There’s that. Some of the things running around the forest—literally running, and fast—are too big to pay them any mind at all, and frankly, they like it that way. 

“Oh, for sure. We’re way more likely to get eaten by a murder dolphin. A normal one.” Bucky scratches out the shape and climbs back up to their platform. “I just… I don’t know. I didn’t want to get in the water after that, is all. Knowing it was under there, somewhere, and I couldn’t see it coming.”

He shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t. But it would lighten the mood, maybe bring Bucky fully back from the beach, and Steve finds it impossible to resist. “Dun-dun,” he chants. “Dun-dun. Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun—”

Bucky throws a twig at him. “Shut it, you dork.” He laughs, and it’s the genuine sort that signals an even keel. Success. “I’m going out there for salt tomorrow or whenever this storm lets up, jock-necked nessie or not. I have ferns to ferment, damn it.”

“But we are going to need a bigger boat, right?” Steve grins, but the truth is he’d rather this little development mean they forego the raft altogether rather than just build it bigger or more boat-like. 

Still, saying that is a one-way ticket to an argument, and he’s already messed up enough with his worry-fueled overreaction to Bucky’s recap of his trip to the beach.

Bucky makes a thoughtful noise. “Sturdier, for sure. And I think maybe a different design. I was going for something like a really broad canoe, but that’s… kind of like a nessie shape. I don’t think we want to look like a nessie from underneath. For _reasons_.”

Steve shrugs. “Back to the drawing board?”

“Back to the drawing board.” Bucky pulls his knees up and wraps his arms around them, propping his chin on top as he looks out at their muddy campsite. “I don’t know how to make paddles look like they aren’t flippers, though. I mean, flippers are just bio-paddles.”

“Well, we have time to figure it out,” Steve says. He scoots closer and snakes an arm around Bucky’s shoulders, pulling him in closer for that warmth that comes more from having his solid presence than from their combined body heat.

“We have all the time in the world, Buck. Nothing but time.”

* * *

It rains steadily for three entire days, and partway through the third day, they agree to go looking for blue gobbler, which is what they’ve decided the turkey-sized dinosaurs with the feathers in blue and yellow ought to be called because of their color, their size, the way they taste, and the high-pitched warble sound they make when startled.

Blue gobblers are fast, but they also have a strict “wait it out” approach to rain, which means they are little—by comparison to some of the other things out here, anyway—blue lumps under the ferns huddling with their heads tucked in their feathery armpits and their fluffy tails wrapped loosely around their feet.

Honestly, they’re pretty cute. But Steve’s hungry. 

It only takes them a couple of hours to locate and successfully catch a blue gobbler, with Bucky on point, Steve taking up position once a likely menu item is spotted, and Bucky beating the ferns to chase dinner toward where Steve casts their net. Tossing a net successfully is little different than tossing the shield, in principle, and scouting is scouting. 

They have the system down pat by now.

They’ve also got their culinary scene mostly sorted, so it’s hardly a full hour after arriving back at their base camp before Steve’s got their fire for the evening set up under their surprisingly water-resistant lean-to and Bucky has that dinosaur stripped, gutted, butterflied and roasting on that open fire.

Steve wipes his hands down when he gets back from tossing the skin-wrapped intestines far from their turf. Predictably, Bucky has the organ meat they _do_ eat neatly sliced and cooling on a plaited palm plate by the time he returns, for them to munch on while the rest of their dinner sizzles temptingly. Steve estimates he’s already eaten about a third of it.

“Run into anything?” Bucky asks around a yawn.

Steve shakes his head and sits down beside him under the lean-to, back against the stacked wood. “The last stuff we threw in the hole was gone, though. So something still likes our kitchen trash.” He takes the rest of the liver and the gizzard, saves heart and lungs for later.

Bucky nods. “Well, we do make the only kitchen trash in town.” He snakes his arm around Steve’s back and lets his head tip to the side to rest on Steve’s shoulder with a little contented sigh.

“That we do. Guess we won’t have competition there for a hundred million years at least.” Steve reaches his arm around Bucky and presses his cheek to the top of Bucky’s head.

The wind shakes the pine boughs far overhead and rustles some of the palms closer down, and the steady plop-plop of water dripping from the greenery adds its own rhythm to the mix, some notes higher, some lower, combining with the background pitter-patter of the rain itself coming down.

Steve watches the flames of their fire flickering inside their fence of pterodactyl wing bones, the light glancing off the polished bone and highlighting the sooty smears where the smoke has been blown against their surface. 

“Wish it would stop raining.”

“It’s not that bad,” Bucky says, his voice muzzy with impending sleep. “Soothing, you know?”

And Bucky’s got a point, sure. It’s beautiful, the whole setup. Steve might prefer to be dry, might miss the cackles and shrieks of the pterodactyls reverberating off the cliffs, but their fire will take care of the damp and their neighbors to the north will make up for this bit of silence once the storm moves on. 

And in the meantime, though it’s hardly been rare during this past however long, Steve can’t seem to get over the novelty of Bucky leaning against him in front of a crackling fire with no deadlines, no responsibilities—rafts and kimchi aside—no world to save, just the two of them and the dancing flames.

He supposes there must have been times like this in the future, times in the Tower where they curled up on the sofa and pretended to watch the television when they really just listened to each other’s heartbeat and breathing until sleep overtook them. It can’t be unique to this prehistoric chapter of their lives. 

But time seems to move differently these days, all the same. Seems to stretch out liquid and golden in front of him, drawing him along with a gentle come hither, and drawing Bucky along by his side. He wonders if Bucky feels that way, too.

“Hey, Buck?” he murmurs.

There’s a sleepy sound in response, and Steve smiles into Bucky’s hair. “Never mind,” he says. “It can wait.”

And it can. He was right before. There’s all the time in the world for it.

**Author's Note:**

> There's probably no need for a content warning, but there's some briefly described dissociation here, followed by some unsteadiness as a result, and also some detailed observation of dinosaur-on-dinosaur violence.


End file.
